Right Thinking from the Left Coast

Tag: John Boehner

So now that the Republicans have taken back both houses of Congress, what should they do for the next two years? Nothing, argues National Review:

The desire to prove Republicans can govern also makes them hostage to their opponents in the Democratic party and the media. It empowers Senator Harry Reid, whose dethroning was in large measure the point of the election. If Republicans proclaim that they have to govern now that they run Congress, they maximize the incentive for the Democrats to filibuster everything they can — and for President Obama to veto the remainder. Then the Democrats will explain that the Republicans are too extreme to get anything done.

They’ll say that anyway. If the Republicans proposed poached eggs for breakfast, the Democrats would denounce them as dangerous extremists. And I don’t think NRO actually believes this argument because they later say Republicans should force the Democrats to filibuster/veto popular legislation.

Even if Republicans passed this foolish test, it would do little for them. If voters come to believe that a Republican Congress and a Democratic president are doing a fine job of governing together, why wouldn’t they vote to continue the arrangement in 2016?

Which brings us to the alternative course: building the case for Republican governance after 2016. That means being a responsible party, to be sure, just as the conventional wisdom has it. But part of that responsibility involves explaining what Republicans stand for — what, that is, they would do if they had the White House.

So the Republicans shouldn’t govern. Instead, they should gear up for 2016 to take the White House and Congress at which point they will … what? … concentrate on keeping power?

I’m sorry, but I really don’t care about the Republican Party one way or the other. Whether governing hurts or helps their prospects in 2016 is irrelevant to me and should be irrelevant to people who are not actual party operatives. We had a unified Republican government for six years and the result was the most massive expansion of government power since the New Deal.

No. What we want from the Republicans is progress. What we want is for them to turn back the tide of government expansion. What we want is for them to … what’s that word … govern? The Republicans are on probation right now. It’s up for them to prove themselves worthy of getting power back.

There is precedent for governing and winning elections at the same time: Republicans worked with President Clinton and kept Congress and won the White House twice as a result. But they didn’t win because they grandstanded. The won because the accomplished things — welfare reform, spending restraint, NAFTA — that made them worthy of winning all three branches of government.

Yet Republicans mistake the meaning of the midterms at their own peril. These elections were a particularly frank repudiation of Barack Obama and the past six years of failed stimulus, disastrous foreign policy, and rotten economic news. Even the president’s historic health-care reform remains a negative with voters. But if the GOP thinks it has a mandate to return to the equally unpopular bailout economics and social conservatism of the George W. Bush years, it too will be sent packing as early as the next election.

You should read Nick’s entire piece, which breaks down the polling to show a decisive shift against big-government, in every respect.

It’s not enough for the Republicans to not be Obama. “Not Obama” isn’t going to be a candidate in 2016. In fact, Obama won’t be a candidate in 2016 (savor that relief for a moment). If the Republicans want to earn our votes in 2016, they need to accomplish things. They need to prove themselves worthy. They need to show that they can get government out our hair, despite the man in the White House.

How does this break down into nuts and bolts? On the day after the election, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell laid out an agenda for the next two years. It includes approving the Keystone XL pipeline, tax reform and fast track trade authority. It also includes three changes to Obamacare: raising to 40 the hours needed to qualify as a full-time employee for the employer mandate, exempting veterans from counting toward the 50-employee mark that triggers the coverage mandate and repealing the medical device tax.

These are all OK ideas and some of them — like fast track trade authority — are supported by the President. But it’s kind of small potatoes. It’ll make a nice first month, but it’s not exactly the Contract with America. I would prefer something a bit bolder.

This would involved finding things that the Democrats or the President will support. There’s a strain of thought among conservatives, exemplified by the NRO piece above, that working with Democrats will give “legitimacy” to Obama. Nuts to that. The country needs things done. And if we can the President on board, great.

But the Republicans should also pass legislation they know will be filibustered or vetoed. This could give the Democrats something to talk about in 2016 (“look at the extreme legislation we blocked!”). But I think it more likely, if Republicans are smart … OK, if they’re not too dumb … OK, if they’re not completely stupid … that it would give the Republicans something to run on in 2016. It would give the American people something to vote for, not just something to vote against. When the Republicans have run on a positive agenda — Reagan in 1980, Newt in 1994 — they have done well.

As for specific issues: the first on that list would be entitlement reform. The President has indicated that he is open to it. It’s time to call his bluff. The deficit has been shrinking in recent years but will soon begin to blow up as the bill for Baby Boomer retirees comes do. The time to act is now, before we are back in the land of trillion dollar deficits.

A lot of Republicans worry that overhauling Medicare and Social Security will open them up to attack from the Democrats. But here’s the thing: that’s going to happen anyway. The number of elections that have not included a Democrat “mediscare” campaign over the last forty years is precisely zero. The Democrats are going to demonize Republicans anyway. At the very least we could get something out of it. And if it costs the Republicans some seats, so be it. It would be worth it to slice trillions off our debt.

The counter-argument is they should wait until the Republicans have the White House as well. That way, they won’t have to compromise with Democrats and accept a tax hike or defense spending cuts in return for entitlement reform. I find that hope ridiculously optimistic. It assumes that Republicans will take the White House and keep the Senate. And it assumes that they will take the political risk of entitlement reform once they have full power, which I find unlikely.

Act now. At the very least, call the President’s bluff. Then you’ll have something to run on in 2016.

The second priority should be regulatory reform, which is sucking a couple of trillion dollars out of the economy. Probably the most important regulatory reform is the repeal of Sarbanes-Oxley, which is strangling our economy, halting IPOs and a nightmare for businesses. It’s the poisonous spider at the center of the web of economic malaise. President Obama will probably oppose this. Good! Make him stand with the bureaucrats and trial lawyers! Over 60% of the American people think regulation is too onerous, including many independents. This is a winning issue for Republicans.

Third would be an overhaul of the patent and copyright laws which are strangling innovation. The Republicans are open to this and the President is too, despite fierce opposition from trial lawyers. Reform could be passed in the first few months of 2015.

Fourth, an overhaul of our drug policy, specifically a recognition of state laws on medical and recreational marijuana. The President has occasionally made noises on this and a majority of Americans now favor pot legalization. The Republicans can get ahead of the Democrats on this by embracing a federalist approach: states that keep pot illegal will still have the aide of the DEA in keeping it illegal; states that make it legal will be left alone. I have little hope the Republicans will do this, but it would be a great step for them.

Fifth, an overhaul of Obama’s anti-terror powers. Justin Amash and Rand Paul give me hope that the GOP may be open to this. The best thing about reigning in Obama’s police state would be exposing the lie that the Democrats are the party of civil liberties and personal freedom.

That’s just for starters. There are other things: more spending cuts, reigning in Obama’s foreign policy and executive power excesses, a symbolic repeal of Obamacare (symbolic because it will be vetoed). But I see the above as doable and I see it as proving the GOP’s supposed small-government bona fides. If they’re serious, they will do something along these lines.

I have no doubt that the Republicans will run into opposition from the President. In fact, his petulant press conference seemed to promise that he would do what he wants on issues like immigration and only invite cooperation on his agenda. We’ll see what happens behind closed doors. This President has, on occasion, compromised with Republicans. But he has also been willing to take a my-way-or-the-highway approach, particularly when he had Congress for the first two years (Republicans were invited only to tweak details of Democratic legislation; kind of like being asked which arm you want the shark to bite off).

But if the President is determined to pursue his agenda and won’t cooperate, then pass the legislation anyway. Force him to veto it. Force him to oppose. Force his party to go on record as the party of bigger taxes, more government and no reform. Force him to tie his former Secretary of State and Heir Apparent to his unpopular agenda.

That’s something you can run in 2016. That’s something that might bring my vote in 2016. Until then, I will remain skeptical of the GOP and their commitment to small government.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told This Week he’d “bring the Congress back” to vote on a new resolution authorizing military force against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but only if President Barack Obama requested one. Congress has received heaps of criticism for staying out of town during the airstrikes against ISIS, with some suggesting they’re happy to avoid a contentious vote on the issue.

Boehner reprised his line that typically the president initiated the resolution, a position of faux-politesse that the Daily Show already mocked last week. This led George Sephanopoulos [sic] to wonder if Boehner was avoiding the vote because it might split his party ahead of the midterms, something he said was whispered to ABC News political reporter Jeff Zeleny.

Boehner further opines that the existing AUMF is enough for Obama to act on.

One of the reasons Barack Obama has been allowed to usurp so much power is because Congress has allowed him to. Almost all legislative powers reside with Congress, yet they stand around while he rules by executive order, rewrites the laws to his purpose and starts wars on his own. The war-making power lies with Congress. Yet, for the second time, they are allowing the President to start bombing another country. Yes, the President is supposed to ask for their authorization. But they are supposed to assert their authority on this. They should be meeting right now either to give the President the authority to attack Syria or to refuse it. And if he won’t comply, they can exercise the power of the purse to cut the funding.

Stephanopoulos sideswipes the issue by noting this would potentially split the Republican Party. There is a significant fraction that would oppose this but they are still a small minority. The real issue is that the Republicans — like everyone else — have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, ISIS is horrific: a radical Islamist regime that is imposing severe sharia over the regions they control, murdering ethnic and religious minorities and spreading terror over the region. On the other hand, do we really need another boondoggle in the Middle East? Do we really want to spend the treasure and lives needed, even assuming we can destroy ISIS?

It’s a hard debate. I can see why Congress wants to avoid it. But having hard debates is part of their fucking job description. The Civil Rights debate was hard too. So was the Vietnam War. Balancing the budget in the 90’s was hard. But those Congresses argued, debated and eventually voted. They did their job. And they were held responsible for it, a nation that terrifies our current leaders.

This is pure cowardice. It’s the same cowardice the Congress showed in 2003 when, rather than declare war on Iraq, they punted that authority to the President. They didn’t want to oppose it. But they didn’t want to take responsibility if it went wrong. And sure enough, when it went wrong, the Democrats said, “Well, we didn’t declare war on Iraq; we left that decision to Bush!”

Make a decision, guys. Have the debate. We’re dropping bombs on two countries and have over four hundred boots on the ground. If this goes wrong, it’s still on you for failing to stop it. Get your lazy asses back to Washington and do your damned job.

So for all of the stress, the House GOP leadership (including Paul Ryan), a minority of Republican Congressmen, and a majority of Democratspassed the tax deal they were offered by the Senate. The Rich (less than 1% of the population) got tagged with a 4.6% increase (horrors!) and caps were placed on deductions, among other meaningless items.

I suppose it is palatable since we have at least gotten the remainder of Bush’s tax cuts to remain permanent. Even Grover Norquist has twisted this and basically said that since the tax cuts had expired, those Republicans who voted for this deal were voting for a tax cut, not an increase. Interesting contortion.

But then there’s virtually no spending cut in this deal. The increased revenue is not going to make a dent in the deficit. For all the drama, we slapped a few million wealthy people with a small tax raise and refused to address the fact that spending is out of control. It’s a pathetic failure of the entire political establishment.

It is easy to blast Boehner today, but what choice did he have? Yes, I personally believed it would have been best to go over the cliff and let the chips fall where they may. However, I knew that Boehner wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want to take the blame for tax increases on the middle class (it’s going to happen eventually anyway) and it was too tempting to target the unpopular minority that is top earners. Also, he likes grand, useless compromises for some reason.

On the bright side, around 2/3 of the House GOP broke with Boehner on this deal and hence have political cover. Boehner has set himself up beautifully for the inevitable coup and primary challenge that he has coming.

I would say that he was courageous to do this IF I actually believed that the deal means anything. It doesn’t. It’s too little, too late, and still comes across as a major defeat for the GOP. We could have gotten a tax deal as useless as this one weeks ago and not had the brinksmanship that managed to make Obama look like a triumphant, responsible statesman.

Boehner must not be returned as the Speaker of the House, even if means leaving the post vacant. The real fight is going to be over the debt ceiling and Boehner cannot be counted on to do right either by his party or the nation.

Rep. Boehner apparently misinterpreted conservative demands that he toughen it out on fiscal cliff negotiations. He came out with a very short press release this morning and did nothing more than tell Obama to take or leave the GOP’s plan or come up with his own.

I disagree with this approach (yeah, I rarely cut Boehner any slack). It’s not the President’s job to propose this, it’s Congress’s and specifically the House of Representatives. Boehner is engaging in needless dick-measuring with Obama when he should instead pass something through the House and let the Democrats explain their votes and vetoes. This gridlock plays perfectly into the President’s hands and bolsters the media-driven perception (which the electorate is falling for) that the failure of negotiations will be the GOP’s fault.

The GOP is in disarray! Congressional Republicans are wavering on taxes as Speaker John Boehner’s eyes well up with tears at the sight of the oncoming fiscal cliff.

What happened? Obama found his backbone with nothing left to lose now that he has four more years to party it up. The polls favor his tax increases on the rich and he knows that his media allies will assure that the GOP takes the blame for the resulting tax raises on the middle class, the resulting recession, or both.

Never before has the GOP needed some balls more and yet found them in shorter supply.

A day may come, when the courage of conservatives fails. When we forsake our oaths to Grover Norquist and break the fellowship of the Tea Party. That day is not this day. That day will probably come in December.

This week, we need to gather up and melt down some brass for John Boehner’s balls. This will require:

pfluffy, who elbowed me in the ribs for that XBox*: Night Boat to Cairo by Madness

Iconoclast, who trampled over me at Best Buy* for the last Blu-Ray copy of The Complete Works of John Hughes Collection: Us and Them by Pink Floyd

Biggie G, who delivered a crippling kick to my kneecap and ran off with the iPad I wanted at the Apple Store*: Super Bad by James Brown

Mississippi Yankee…there I was at Toys R Us*, reaching for that super-cool Thomas the Train set. The second I touched it, MY emerged, grabbed my hand, and bit it. He didn’t take the train set though. Just wanted to share the pain. The true spirit of the holidays? Green Hornet Theme by Al Hirt

It’s been downright painful watching conservatives come to grips with the reality that Obama was re-elected. A couple of my favorite sites are about ready to go all Jonestown about it and I haven’t bothered to give them more than a cursory glance for the past week.

Everywhere it’s “Why, why, why?” and “We have to change everything we believe!” and “We just had bad luck, it means nothing, nothing I tell you!” and even “We have to secede, obviously.”

At the risk of sounding like a big twat (ha, ha, ha: shut up), I’ve never been more ashamed of us as a movement or group or what-have-you. This is not the End of America, for fuck’s sake. If you’re waiting for the collective breakdown and war (or, worse, hoping for it), settle down.

It’s not Morning in America either, mind you. Let’s not kid ourselves. This country is in for a brutal decade. But that doesn’t mean that America is fatally wounded. Our country has made a shitload of really bad decisions, run up too much debt, and divided itself on some ridiculous issues that never should have become government problems. We have the bad misfortune to be home when the papers are being served.

We’re getting ready for the next act of The Great Devaluation. Real estate and college got overvalued, made a bunch of people rich, and then it turned out to be unsustainable in the first act. We’ve been in shit, but only ankle-deep. The next wave hits EVERYBODY where it hurts: Our money. We don’t have enough and what we do have is going to be worth less, if not worthless. Stocks are going to take a major hit, companies are going to tighten their belts, and more. This is all coming about because we built everything on crap and let our “leaders” get away with mortgaging our future with insane entitlements, limitless wars, and low taxes. Well, welcome to the future.

Emigration isn’t an option for me and I’m not really jazzed about the idea of joining up with some asshole warlord in Civil War Episode II: Attack of the Self-Entitled Douchebags. If you’re good with all that, then go ahead and start digging your bunker and just start waiting. I don’t care.

The Democrats are not up to the task of handling what’s happening and frankly, I don’t think the GOP was either. It’s too late and I think this is one of those disasters of American history that just has to happen before we can move on, like Pearl Harbor (the actual event, not the film). I don’t know how else we break our bad habits without imposed austerity.

Now, plenty of pundits and politicians are getting their silly asses on television talking about how we need to change this and that. Stop apologizing for rape, let the Mexicans run wild, and admit that the wage gap is deliberately caused by evil, stinky men instead of market forces. If you want to keep going for the two party system of Democrat and Democrat-lite, that’s a personal choice. I don’t think we need to go that far.

It is time to compromise though. I still don’t know how to work out a “peace accord”, but I do know that we can call a truce and take the time to retrench without retreating

First, taxes must go up on high earners. We have to give that away and I see no way we win the Battle of Fiscal Cliff without some casualties. Coddling the rich isn’t doing us any good if they can’t even buy a Romney presidency. It’s totally symbolic, it’s not going to help the deficit or jobs, and it’s against our beliefs. Too bad. We’re taking a break from worshipping the wealthy while the American people enjoy having their demagogues to spread the wealth pain around. I still think letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire is fitting, but we should “let” the Democrats talk us out of it if they throw in something worthwhile.

Second, it’s time to end the War in Afghanistan and reduce and reorient the military to stick with what it has done best since the 19th Century: Defend North America. Yeah, I’m going all Pat Buchanan on this. Israel: I am really and truly sorry. But if we’re really heading into a Civil War, it would probably be better to have our guys back here, right?

Next, let’s bite our tongues when the President takes full credit for the deal. Let him have this last big fuckin’ deal. I think Boehner sucks, you do too, but lets go easy on him this one time.

The unsustainability of Medicare, Social Security, and ObamaCare is not going to be seriously addressed or resolved by the federal government at this time. Everything I’m proposing here is with the assumption that it won’t. We get to watch and let the Democrats totally own the disaster. When it’s time for them to give some things up and save what’s left of the Obama legacy, they’ll know.

The one issue I don’t think we should compromise on is any immigration reform that requires amnesty for those already living here. I think America’s natural xenophobia will kick back in as those lettuce-picking jobs start looking better and better as the unemployment starts to dry up. Be patient on this one.

MOST CONTROVERSIAL THRILL ARGUMENT EVER, COMING RIGHT UP.

Finally, screw the Constitution of the United States of America. I think it’s time we all acknowledged that the Constitution needs a redo. It is failing us and the American people clearly don’t believe in it or care anymore except when they want to cherry-pick one amendment or another to suit their causes. It is almost a dead fucking letter and there are no longer any peaceful means of binding our current government back to it.

You want to scare the hell out of the DC establishment? It’s time to call for a Constitutional Convention, through the states. They laugh at your pathetic secession petitions but they’ll stop laughing and choke when they realize that we’re about to change the rules to fuck them over. This isn’t a temper tantrum. It’s a cold, dead-eyed threat of a long-term solution. Start demanding this at every turn. Americans are going to love the idea soon enough, if the doomsayers are right.

Conservatives and progressives simply do not agree on what kind of country we should be and what the Constitution means and independents in the middle are too brain-dead and disengaged to care. We’re not going anywhere as a people until we firmly establish a new concept of the relationship between the federal government, the states, and the people. Our government cannot do it at this point.

The Culture Wars were driven by the Supreme Court making these decisions for us and they’ve done an awful job. They’re completely unpredictable and they barely even use the Constitution as the basis for rulings anymore. Congress has ignored its fiscal duties and its members serve to benefit themselves. The Presidency is imperial in everything but name. Whole industries are crippled with executive orders and psychotic bureaucrats. This has to stop. We need to accept that the old Constitution has done nothing to restrain all three out-of-control branches of government and quit acting like the Founding Fathers were flawless gods. What they created was beautiful, but it isn’t working anymore.

We stop the Right Wing Meltdown. The game is still on and what is happening in Congress is everything right now (even though the Petraeus thing is the most awesome scandal of my lifetime). My advice is to comment on the Jonestown Blogs that the histrionics are done and it’s time for a Constitutional Convention. Start getting that into the public consciousness now.

I’ve been preaching the importance of staying on task ever since last Tuesday’s electoral calamity. This isn’t because of my sunny disposition or optimistic outlook. I have neither. It’s because the United States needs a vibrant pro-Liberty movement and we’re it.

No more embarrassing theatrics. Do it FOR THE CHIIIIIIILDREN, you bastards.

I invite all denunciations and mental health referrals. Sometimes, you just gotta rant.

I don’t like Speaker Boehner or trust him. Which just means I have a lot in common with your average conservative Republican congressman (that and skinny-dipping). It bothers me that this is effectively the most powerful Republican in the federal government. He’s going to compromise our best strengths away and we’re going to get screwed. But I really have no idea what else the GOP in the House should do.

We’re talking about Obama’s legacy here. A working and lasting deal on the debt and taxes would be the starting point for anything good or bad that happens after it. Obama missed this chance last time through incompetence and opportunism. He insisted on holding off on any long-term solution until after re-election and allowed the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff and Taxmageddon (as well as Obamacare, now not going away) to drag down the economy for another year and a half.

This is why his first term must be considered to be a failure. Obama roughly held unemployment in place–unless you want to get into the more complex argument about labor force participation–and that was the issue foremost on voter’s minds. But Bill Clinton promised that nobody could have fixed the economy in four years and he wouldn’t lie to us, right? So Obama gets his re-election and another shot at a grand bargain on the debt ceiling and taxes.

Frankly, I’d be more impressed if the federal government woud just pass a real budget in compliance with the law, but they are so fucked that this isn’t even on the table right now. Whatever Big Fuckin’ Deal these damn fools come up with, it’s going to equally celebrated and meaningless. They’re not doing what needs to happen, they’re postponing it. They’re not really doing what they’re supposed to, but making it look like they are. It’s theatre, but we had best know what the audience is expecting to see on stage: The Rich as the antagonist, who must lose at third act.

The GOP is going to lose plainly on taxes. Incomes on those who make over $250,000 need to go up because we can’t keep defending these people for no clear reason. Yeah, yeah, raising taxes now would throw us back into recession or worsen the one we’re already in, depending on your outlook. The proposed tax increases won’t close the deficit either, I know. But Obama must have that to show off. It’s inescapable. Don’t get me wrong, if we HAD to give Obama a trophy, I’d tell him to take Boehner’s testicles; but he doesn’t want them. He wants to confiscate more wealth from the wealthy.

I say that the taxes on top earners have to go up because the American people don’t know dick about economics. Let’s face it. If they did, they would have shown a lot more curiosity about the lack of a federal budget for nearly four years now and possibly asked some questions about why the recovery was oh so weak. Oh, yeah: They probably wouldn’t have re-elected Obama either.

My prediction is that the Democrats will get the tax increase on “the rich” while barely giving anything in return. Don’t get mad about this though. It’s a loser and the GOP will be better off with it resolved. It will suck all the wind out of the “party of the rich” arguments if any other part of the deal falls through.

The GOP has the big gun in this argument. They can always let all of the Bush tax cuts expire. The demented extremist side of me who would like to collectively kick the electorate in the junk for last Tuesday LOVES the thought of doing this just for spite. Shitty thing is that this would hurt my household too. I’m a working schlub, married to a teacher, and we have two kids. We are that middle class that everyone purports to care about so much and really doesn’t. Hence, we hate everyone else.

Obama most assuredly does not want to be blamed for raising taxes on the middle class (except for Obamacare, because “kids with cancer” or something). If the Democrats don’t agree to some spending cuts beyond reducing the military to menacing our enemies with rubberband-fired paper clips, then the GOP must announce that no agreement that realistically reduces the deficit could be reached and they have no choice but to allow the tax cuts to sunset.

The Democrats do not want this and will work hard to prevent it. The problem is that even though we have the advantage in the form of the great tax increase gambit, we have the biggest disadvantage on the game board: Boehner himself. This isn’t about him, it’s about Obama. Both of them want to secure their own legacies and I think Boehner is the less committed of the two. Worse, he still thinks that something can be worked out man-to-man with this president. His greatest weapon is that which Obama most fears: tax increases on everybody. Not beating Obama at golf.

If Boehner does not use the big gun, then he establishes Obama as a good-enough president for resolving the debt stalemate, passes an idiotic compromise that accomplishes nothing for the good of his country, and proves once again how ultimately meaningless it is to give the GOP control of any part of the federal government.

Democrats and liberals are crowing because John Boeher’s budget proposal failed to pass the House when 40 Republicans backed out, wanting bigger spending cuts. Supposedly, this demonstrates how radical the GOP is and how Boeher has lost control.

Maybe. But consider this:

GOP lawmakers and aides – including Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) – blamed Democrats for defeating the bill. Democrats, including Appropriations Ranking Democrat Norm Dicks, said they’d support the bill, but reversed course because of pressure from Democrats opposed to an offset that cut a subsidy for automobile manufacturers.

So Boehner had a bipartisan agreement. The Democrats backed out. And this is somehow the Tea Party’s fault. I’ll leave it to the class to decide which possibility is worse: that the Democrats backed out to weaken Boehner politically; or that they’re truthful in claiming they backed out because the Republicans wouldn’t restore a corporate welfare provision.

Because it didn’t limit the debt ceiling at all, that’s why. It simply put in place a nearly automatic raising of the ceiling as long as Republicans couldn’t overcome an Obama veto. Come Monday, 9/12/11, another $500 BILLION will be added to the ceiling, and all Boehner et al did was provide themselves political cover for that predetermined increase on that predetermined date. If there’s still any Boehner and Super Committee apologists out there, explain how this is a victory for either Republicans or the country:

It is hard to believe that the last time the US had breached its debt ceiling was a whopping one month ago. Courtesy of much toil, tears and televized theater (not to mention fake compromises), the Obama administration managed to get an accordion-feature extension of the debt-ceiling-cum-target, whereby it is currently at $14.694 trillion, and can be extended in $500 billion increments, for a total of $1.5 trillion provided congress and senate do not vote down such an expansion. The reason we bring this up is because as the data below demonstrates, the US Treasury will breach its brand new debt ceiling… on Monday.

That’s right: as of yesterday, total US debt was $14.717 trillion (obviously an all time record, and every day closer to parity with US GDP), while debt subject to the ceiling was $16.772 trillion, or just $22 billion below the total before someone has to go ahead and commence the whole debt ceiling fiasco from scratch. And since as the Treasury is auctioning off another $32 billion in 3 Year bonds on Monday, that process better scramble or else all that rhetoric about Social Security being nothing but a plundered ponzi scheme will be proven true yet again. And while we see flashing headlines that Obama’s proposal is now set to be a bullshit $450 billion (bullshit because republican will absolutely not go ahead with it), we are positive that not one word will be uttered to inform the public that as of this moment Harry Reed has already started the process of the next $500 billion debt ceiling expansion, one which will bring total US debt-to-GDP to over 100% for the first time since the post-WW2 period.

Most recent total debt breakdown:

And next week’s full debt auction schedule:

And the issue in question that will tip us over:

And the Super Committee hasn’t even gotten started putting the screws to us yet. Isn’t it great that we have Republicans to SAVE our country? Wiemar, here we come…..

One of the best pieces of advice that I learned and adhere to over the years about investing is this ,”Don’t fall in love with any stock, it’s business, remember that”. No matter how attractive the stock looks now, a regular application of due diligence is essential where you evaluate not only it’s balance sheet and quarterly statements, but you continually ask yourself why this deserves to be in your portfolio. Lesson number two, apply the exact same rule to political parties and political movements:

I was a big Tea Party supporter from the beginning, I liked their message and their sense of urgency that we can’t be dicking around too much longer, we need to start fixing our problems now. Between the push for smaller government, less governmental intrusion in our lives, less reliance on what they can give us and more on what we should be doing for ourselves, all this resonated with me. But lately they have not only been acting like spoiled brats, too big for their britches, and totally clueless about how things work in politics, but have proven so divisive within their own ranks, that it is painful to watch.

I understand them not liking Boehner’s plan, it is pretty weak cheese:

Cutting not even $1 trillion from the debt.
Establishing a joint committee of 12 to work out future deficit cuts (yeah, like that always works).

It has some good stuff in it too:

Raises the debt ceiling by only $900 billion, not the $2.9 trillion that Obama wants.
It requires a later vote by both houses on a balanced budget amendment (another dead on arrival procedure with this Congress, but maybe they will be more successful with a different one come next year).
And it does not raise any taxes.

But we can’t get too bogged down in the details because this plan is dead at the Senate anyway, it is nothing more then the first move in a political chess game.

These Tea Party loud mouths somehow think that since they had a fairly successful mid term result last year, that now they got the political heft to start bullying folks, just quit it.

It does not take a frickin’ genius to figure out that folks are mad as hell at those out of control spenders, this is the sentiment the Tea Party tapped into last year, an easy hook, now if they want to build on that they will tone down the rhetoric, get realistic about what they can and can’t accomplish, and don’t stab themselves in the eye with a pencil and bleed on everyone. Some of us are ready to send them to their room without supper.